Ahmedabad: Gujarat reported 25 new Covid-19 cases, with six of them being accounted for from Valsad including three children.The three children who tested Covid-19 positively are two girls 4 and 9 years and a 16-year-old boy.
All those who tested positive in the district are presently under home isolation and their condition is stated to be stable.
Valsad has been witnessing a spike in Covid-19 cases — 66 cases and two deaths due to the infection were reported in the last 15 days. The first of these two deaths was of a 53-year-old man on October 7 — three months after last death due to the infection was reported in the district on July 8. Another patient aged 52 also died on October 20.
The two minor girls who tested positive Friday are siblings and their mother has also tested positive.
The father of the two girls said, “Me and my wife had taken both doses of vaccination in August. We attended the Navratri festival organized in our society. My wife’s friend, who also attended the festival, got infected first and later we carried out the RT-PCR test and my wife tested positive. Health officials also carried out tests of my both daughters and they had turned up positive. My wife and daughters are asymptomatic.”
District Collector Kshipra Agre said that Valsad being the district bordering Maharashtra might be a reason for the spike in cases.
“Apart from this, many of the patients have travel history… We have also found that 40 per cent of the patients are those who came in contact with positive cases and 10 per cent have travel history while 20 per cent have professional exposure like working in the industries in Vapi, Pardi and Sarigam.”
Meanwhile, Additional Chief Secretary of the Health department Manoj Aggarwal Thursday, in response to a query attributed the spike in cases to the industrial estate of Vapi, citing that “movement of people might be a possible reason.”
Valsad district has till date recorded 6,171 cases with 46 deaths and 46 patients still undergoing treatment in hospitals.
Valsad, which has an estimated vaccine-eligible population of 13.15 lakh, has administered the first dose to nearly 93 per cent of the population and has ensured that 50 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated.
